Sometime around age 35 I was struck with the realization that I was no longer young. Or to put it the way I did at the time, I'd lost a step. It wasn't anything drastic. I just realized that I no longer had quite the speed or endurance I'd had before. And so I pronounced myself middle aged.
Yesterday Kim and I started out on a hike. The first part was an uphill climb of fairly moderate steepness, and about half way up my legs were tired enough that I actually wondered for a moment what I was doing there. Once we got to the top of the ridge, I was fine the rest of the way, even on subsequent climbs, so it was probably just the lack of warm up. Still, I felt like I should not have been that tired. For as much hiking and biking as we've done this summer, I should be in good enough shape that such easy climbs are not going to make me tired. At least that's the way it was in the past.
Which makes me wonder if perhaps I've entered the next stage of life, whatever that might be. It can't be old age, of course, since I'm not yet even 60. So what term to use? Upper middle age perhaps? I've never broken down the stages any smaller than young, middle, and old, but maybe I should do that. The first part of middle age was the realization stage, when I began to understand that things don't come as easily as they did before, and I would have to make adjustments to deal with it. The middle stage of middle age would be the acceptance stage where I learned to live with it. There's probably no wake up call for that stage, because I just segued from one to the other.
This last stage I'm calling the uh-oh stage. It's hitting me that I may not be old yet, but I will be before I know it. So far this stage has been marked by two things. One, as I've already stated, is the tiredness and lack of strength, and the feeling that the same amount of exercise doesn't seem to yield the same results as before. The other is fear; not fear of death, certainly, although I've always been afraid of half-dying. It's more like fear for our financial future. At some point we will retire and our incomes will go down. We've tried to take some steps to alleviate that, but is it enough? At a younger age, if there's not enough income, you go out and get another job. But that's not as much of an option for the elderly.
Well, that's as far as I've gotten in my thought processes about this "problem." Physically I'll continue to hike and bike for as long as I can. Financially I'll try to make the right decisions to take us into our future. Other than than, all we can really do is trust that the Lord will work out the rest.
